How to Pass Bump / Bump a Volleyball

Learn how to pass bump or bump a volleyball in this Howcast sports video with Aurora Skarra-Gallagher and Tanya White.

Transcript

One of the basic skills of beach volleyball is called passing. It's also known as bumping.

What you want do is you want to have your arms in front of you, out straight, and you want to contact the ball anywhere from here to here on your arm.

If you contact it too far by your fingers or your thumbs, there's too many angles and ridges there, and it's unpredictable. If you contact it too high up here, it's hard to direct the ball. What you want to do, generally, is have your feet about shoulder width apart. It just depends. Sometimes you can't get there, depending on how the ball is served or hit at you.

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You want to be balanced and you want to have your weight slightly forward and your arms in front of you. Have a little touch on the ball where you bring it up, acting as if your legs are a spring. Get low, platform straight, like a spring.

You want to face the net when you're passing and you want to pass usually two to three feet off the net so that your partner has time to get there.

Unlike indoor, your partner's not at the net waiting to set the ball. They're back in servicing with you, so you need to give them time to get up to the net and set you the ball. And that's how you pass or bump a ball in beach volleyball.